Steve Adubado, Newark's Go-To Guy

By TERRY GOLWAY

Published: March 27, 2005

Correction Appended

NOBODY wears a tuxedo. Richard Codey's thinning hair isn't quite as orange -- or as plentiful -- as that of Lucille Ball. And the host of this particular event seems to prefer to stay in the background and let his guests get the laughs.

Those differences aside, every March for the last 31 years, many of the state's most powerful politicians have journeyed to this city's North Ward for what can only be described as New Jersey's answer to those old Dean Martin celebrity roasts -- with a touch of Tip O'Neill and Frank Sinatra thrown in for good measure.

As with the Martin roasts, everybody knows the star of the show: in this case, it's a 72-year-old grandfather named Stephen N. Adubato Sr. -- ''a modern-day boss and a Santa Claus'' in the words of David Rebovich, director of the Rider College Institute for New Jersey Politics.

Thirty-five years ago, Mr. Adubato gave up a career in education to start a social services organization in this city called the North Ward Center. In the years after the fiery racial uprising of 1967, when the city's middle-class Jews, Italians and Irish fled to the suburbs by the tens of thousands, Mr. Adubato, a third-generation Italian-American, chose to stay in the North Ward and see if he could make a difference in the wounded city of his birth.

Today, as executive director of the North Ward Center on Mount Pleasant Avenue, Mr. Adubato presides over a small empire that includes a charter school, a career-training institute, an early-childhood center and a facility for desperately ill Medicaid patients. The institutions receive millions of dollars from federal, state and local governments.

Not coincidentally, he happens to be among the state's most powerful political brokers, a man whose support is coveted by Democratic candidates from the Newark City Council to the United States Senate to the State House. They seek Mr. Adubato's blessing because he knows how to bring residents to the polls in the vote-rich North Ward, an important consideration in low-turnout races in which the Democratic nomination is tantamount to election.

''Steve Adubato is a throwback to another era,'' said Mr. Rebovich of Rider College. ''He oversees a large operation that provides valuable services to people, and he is a civic leader. To many people in Newark, Adubato is a modern-day boss and a Santa Claus. That is very unusual in today's political environment.''

For his part, Mr. Adubato -- an unassuming figure with an energetic baritone -- said: ''I can organize a group of people behind a candidate, and I'm good at it. People say I have political power. I hope that's true. What's wrong with that?''

Though the question was rhetorical, Mr. Adubato's tone suggested that he is keenly aware that he has made some enemies in his day, and that some people do think there is something wrong with the power he wields in state and local politics.

For instance, it is widely acknowledged that Mr. Adubato lobbied strenuously for John J. Petillo, who was chairman of the Newark Alliance, a business advocacy group, to become president of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, based in Newark. Thanks in part to that support, Mr. Petillo is about to be sworn in as that health-care university's third president.

Or when Mr. Codey -- before he was acting governor or even Senate president -- fought bitterly with Mr. Adubato. Mr. Codey, a lifelong resident of West Orange and wily practitioner of politics himself, charged that Mr. Adubato was involved in Essex County government for ''his own personal advantage.''

But that was then, and this is now. As recently as January, when Mr. Codey delivered his State of the State address to a joint session of the Legislature, Mr. Adubado was seated as close as you could get to the podium -- with Mary Jo Codey, the wife of the acting governor.

And on March 18, the acting governor was among the scores of the powerful and influential who felt almost compelled to gather at the North Ward Center for Mr. Adubato's annual commemoration of St. Patrick, the patron of the Irish, and St. Joseph, whose March 19 feast day is celebrated in many Italian households.

To mark the occasion, Mr. Adubato hands out awards to two politicians, one from each party. This year's honorees were Assemblyman Joseph Roberts, a Democrat from Camden County, who got the award for Irish-American of the year, and Representative Michael Ferguson of Union County, a Republican, whose last name belies his qualifications for Italian-American of the year. (His mother is Italian.)

But the ceremony is really an excuse to bring the state's most powerful politicians to the North Ward Center to be seen and to see for themselves the work under way in Mr. Adubato's charter school, the Robert Treat Academy, and in the other organizations he runs.

Mr. Codey paid tribute to his onetime antagonist, noting that both of his sons played basketball in programs run by Mr. Adubato's organization. Still, he could not resist an almost obligatory dig at one of the state's most important -- although unelected -- political figures.

Correction: March 27, 2005, Sunday
Headlines and picture captions with a front-page article in the New Jersey section today profiling the executive director of the North Ward Center in Newark misspell his surname. As shown in the article, he is Stephen N. Adubato Sr., not Adubado.